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Latin America’s Evildoers and Their Enablers

Latin America's Evildoers and Their Enablers

"All that it takes for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke.

Bassil Da Costa was a first-year student in one of Venezuela's universities. Distressed about deteriorating freedoms in his country as a result of increasing abuses of power by the country's ruler, Nicolás Maduro, Da Costa marched peacefully with fellow students on Feb. 12 in the capital of Caracas to protest those things that distress his generation: Venezuela's obscene official corruption; unprecedented shortages of food and medicine in the country with the largest reserves of oil in the world; and the increasing lawlessness that has made the country the third most violent in the world.

It was the first time that Bassil had ever demonstrated against any government. It would also be the last. He was killed by a bullet to the head fired by uniformed security forces sent to break up the peaceful march, one of two students killed that day alone.

The videos and photos from Venezuela expose the government's abuses: defenseless, unarmed, bloodstained young people in the streets under attack from military, police and government-organized gangs of thugs that shoot, savagely beat and arrest them.

As in a George Orwell novel where day is night and black is white, Maduro responded to the bloodletting not by calling for the perpetrators to be brought to justice, but by persecuting the victims. He ordered the arrest -- on charges of murder -- of the young political leader that has led the peaceful marches, Leopoldo Lopez.

Yet, as the images of corpses in the street, like Bassil Da Costa's and his friend's, circle the globe, in Latin America not one single elected government has raised its voice in protest. To its credit, the U.S. State Department has condemned the Maduro government's assaults on its people.

The orders to kill are given by the communist regime in Cuba, the real power in Caracas and one long accustomed to murdering its adversaries. The orders are obediently followed by Venezuelan officials, starting with the illegitimate "president" Maduro, whose election last year was widely challenged by observers but ratified by the government-controlled Supreme Court, which did not allow any impartial examination or recount.

By all accounts, there are over 50,000 Cubans in Venezuela, including military, intelligence and civilian security officials. They oversee all important strategic communications, espionage and national security agencies. In turn, Venezuela's gives Cuba 120,000 barrels of oil daily -- worth about $5 billion a year -- representing the island's single largest source of income by far and equaling the Soviet subsidies to Castro during the Cold War. Cuba's next two largest revenue sources are also foreign: tourism, and the renting of medical doctors abroad, a modern-day form of indentured servitude whereby the Cuban government keeps three quarters of the doctors' earnings paid by third countries such as Brazil.

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